Shut Up, I'm Thinking!
by Dannondorf
Summary: Oneshot. The chosen four rarely have time to relax and contemplate during their journey. This story explores what Jeff and Ness are thinking about at two specific moments during the War on Giygas.


Shut Up, I'm Thinking!

By Dannondorf

"Blah" is talking. 'Blah' is thinking. The symbol 1111111111111111 means a transition in the story.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own anything related to Earthbound. This story is strictly for entertainment purposes and not for profit.

**Author's Notes:** This is just a small collection of the thoughts of Jeff and Ness during two specific moments of the chosen four's adventure. Each moment focuses on one of them, so there's one story (_Useless_) centered on Jeff and one (_I'm Ready_) centered on Ness. I guess this might have made more sense as a twoshot, but whatever, that's not my style. I only do oneshots.

I've had this idea for a while now, and eventually I had to type it out just to get it out of my system. I also wrote it to distract me from the writer's block I'm having with a Zelda story I'm working on. (It's SOO long! Aarrrgh! Too long!) Anyway, it's kind of short, but I hope you enjoy it! Read and leave a review if it strikes your fancy.

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Moment 1: _Useless_, Jeff's perspective

Jeff rubbed his eyes in an attempt to stimulate himself, but this only made him more tired. He was tempted to forget about all his troubles for a moment and just go to sleep, but he reminded himself that it was his fault he was in this mess; and since it was his fault, he had to do his best to remedy the problem tonight so that Paula and Ness would not have to wait up for him in the morning.

Thinking about his two friends, he turned from his work and stared broodingly at their sleeping forms. 'I wish _I_ were sleeping peacefully right now…lord knows I'll be tired tomorrow…' He was bitter about not getting a good night's rest, but he had to admit that he was comforted somewhat by how peaceful they looked right now; and since this line of thinking was happier than the circumstances which had led to his decision to stay up all night, he allowed himself to indulge in it for a few minutes and shove all notions of work to the back of his mind.

The three teens hadn't been able to afford a stay at a comfortable hotel in weeks, so this was a huge break for them. Paula's exact words had been, "No camping out for us tonight! We're sleeping in a _bed_ this time!" Unfortunately, since hotel rooms in Summers were so expensive, they had only been able to afford a room with one bed. This wasn't a problem, though; the bed was big enough to accompany two people, and after Jeff informed Paula of his plans to stay up and work through the night, she had told Ness that she would not mind sharing the bed with him. She was currently asleep on her side, with her body facing Ness, who was sleeping on his back, his head tilting slightly in her direction.

Jeff smiled at them. One of the first things he noticed when he met Ness and Paula was that they were close. They weren't romantically involved or anything of the like, but they were very animated and comfortable around each other, as if they had been best friends their whole lives. Jeff couldn't claim to have such a strong bond with either of them, though in his defense he hadn't known them as long as they had known each other. (The time difference was only a few weeks, but still.) He wondered if what they had was a really powerful friendship or something else. He recalled part of the story Ness had told him about everything that happened prior to his joining them. The part that had intrigued him the most was when Ness first found Paula locked up in a cell inside a run-down cottage and she had said something along the lines of, "I had dreams that told me a boy named Ness was my destiny." Ever since hearing the story, Jeff had used what little idle time he came across to ponder the meaning of that comment. It was like something he'd expect to hear from one of the romantic airheads at his boarding school. Even so, Paula was no airhead, and she wasn't exactly a romantic either, so Jeff had no reason to doubt that she did in fact have a dream telling her Ness was her destiny. And yet it seemed like neither she nor Ness had picked up on the implications of such a statement. 'Well, maybe it's not really like that,' Jeff thought. 'I'm probably just looking too deeply into things. Maybe I'm just becoming a romantic airhead.' He chuckled to himself. 'God forbid.'

Despite his laughter, though, he couldn't help but remind himself of the signs he had noticed. For example, there was the way she looked at Ness when he wasn't wearing his hat. One thing you had to understand about Ness is that he was almost never seen without that red and blue cap on his head unless he was wearing a protective helmet in its place or unless he was in a hotel room. (Once Jeff asked why he always wore it, and he claimed that the hat was a part of him. Jeff thought that was silly, and said so, but never brought the question up again.) Even when they were sleeping outside, his hat always remained fixed on his head. Tonight, though, he had taken it off intending to wash it, and during the hour or so between checking in and going to bed, Paula had been looking at his hatless form as if it were the most interesting sight in the world. 'Of course, she could have just been staring because he looks so weird without it,' Jeff laughed. 'He doesn't even look like Ness anymore. Hmm…perhaps that's part of what he meant when he said the hat was a part of his being.'

Then, of course, there were the battles. Ness and Paula seemed to perform better when they were by each other's side and worse when they weren't. It kind of made Jeff feel out of place fighting beside them, to be honest.

Jeff decided he had procrastinated enough and shook his head to clear his thoughts before he wasted any more precious time. 'Why am I even thinking about that? I have work to do.' Frustrated at his inability to stay on task, he turning back to his work, and he recalled the reason he was pulling an all-nighter in the first place: his weapon had broken in a fight earlier that day, so now he was building a better gun for a replacement while his friends slept. If they left the hotel tomorrow before he was finished, he'd be useless in battle, ('Well,' Jeff thought glumly, 'I'm also useless in battle even with a weapon, but I suppose without one I'd be more useless.') so he had to get this done before they woke up.

Several hours passed by. He poured his intellect and experience into his project, but by the time he glanced at the clock and it read 4:00 AM, he wasn't any closer to finishing than he'd been three hours ago. He figured he would have been able to finish his project tonight since he had already spent several other nights on it, but apparently luck was against him. 'Aaarrgh! Why can't I make any progress?' Jeff was so frustrated, he felt like hitting something. But that would wake his companions, so he tried sitting still and waiting for his rage to cool. He calmed down a bit, but when he saw that the clock now read 4:30, he became angry again. 'Just great. Come 7:00, not only will I still not have a weapon, I'll be dead tired. Maybe I should quit now and catch two and a half hours of shuteye,' he mused miserably. 'I'm really looking forward to another day of being helpless.'

Ever since he joined this quest, he had felt worthless when compared to his teammates. They were great company and wonderful friends, but that feeling of inferiority bubbled up inside of him whenever he watched what they could do; they were strong, and he wasn't. Sure, he was smart, but had that really helped him any thus far? The problems he faced on this quest weren't like the problems in his engineering classes: he couldn't just do a few computations and experiments and solve them. He couldn't even build a durable weapon.

Jeff recalled everything he'd been through since being called away from his home. He had come to Threed to Ness's and Paula's aid all the way from Winters two months ago because they claimed that they needed his help, and yet since then he hadn't seemed to be helping them at all in battle. They told him that he had been chosen by destiny to fight alongside them against the ultimate evil, a powerful entity known as Giygas, but how could he really be one of these "chosen four" if he couldn't even hold his own against normal enemies? He had been little more than dead weight when he and Ness ventured alone through Moonside to rescue Paula. During that little escapade, he basically served only as a PSI sponge; Ness kept having to waste his psychic points to heal Jeff just to keep him from losing consciousness during fights, and Jeff had not been able to repay the favor since he had no psychic powers or cool fighting abilities that he could help his friend with. This had made him feel terrible, and the fact that they almost lost to the Mani Mani statue because Ness had to repeatedly waste his turns to restore Jeff's HP only angered him more.

Now he, Ness, and Paula were in Summers, a sun-drenched inferno that the climate of Winters had not prepared him for. It was certainly a place he did not want to visit, what with the heat and the lazy, money-hungry attitude of its inhabitants, and he didn't understand why he was there. There had not been one struggle he had encountered which Ness and Paula could not have easily handled alone. He looked at his arm and flexed, then turned away, disappointed by how weak he was; but he was stronger than Paula, and yet she was a more capable fighter. Why? Because she had PSI. Because she and Ness could somehow magically summon the might to freeze or burn or paralyze or otherwise incapacitate their enemies. Jeff's self-esteem sunk lower as he mulled over the source of his power: guns. He wasn't a threat because of any skill he possessed; he was a threat because he happened to be carrying firearms. The only mind power he had was the power to solve differential equations. Jeff became angry; he had worked his butt off to become as smart as he was, but Ness and Paula had been born with PSI. They had not spent their leisure hours studying, ignoring hunger and lack of sleep, as he had, pursuing knowledge with all the passion he could muster.

'What good has all this studying done anyway! It's been about as valuable to me as I've been to the chosen four! Why did I ever waste so much time doing it?' He mentally searched for memories that dated as far back in time as his brain would allow remembrance of. When he had first arrived at the boarding school and heard that his father was the famous Dr. Andonuts, he had studied, hoping that if he could just become a little smarter, he might become smart enough for his father to want him back, or at least understand why his father didn't want him. Ten years of this granted Jeff no such insight.

Why did his efforts go unrewarded? Why didn't he have PSI? Why did he feel so…worthless? Had his two friends done anything to earn their inborn abilities? No, but that didn't matter. Fate had chosen him as the runt of the pack.

He told himself this, and then he looked at Ness and Paula sleeping in their bed. They'd been exhausted upon entering the hotel. Jeff remembered how beat up they'd looked when he first met them under Threed's cemetery. 'No,' he sighed in defeat, 'they earned their strength. They've clearly endured many hardships and accepted their fate with more maturity than _I've_ shown; throughout my time with them, not once have they wanted to give up or take a break when things got tough, and that's more than I can say for myself. They kept fighting, and their sense of purpose fortified their strength of will.

'And Dr. Andonuts doesn't hate me. He's just always busy with his work, work that will benefit mankind. And surely the human race comes before the feelings of one abandoned child, right?' Jeff knew that his father was presently working on the Phase Distorter, and he had a hunch that he and his friends would need it before their quest was over, as they could not continue the cycle of flying, crashing, and rebuilding the Sky Runner. Dr. Andonuts wasn't a bad person. He was just a workaholic. 'Like his son…'

Jeff was calmed down now. He acknowledged that he was not useless. His worth as a fighter came from his ability to construct and operate his own powerful weapons, defensive boosters, enemy inhibitors, and the like, so any weakness in him was due primarily to a lack of effort on his part. 'Ness and Paula might be able to handle their problems by themselves for now, but Giygas's strength will only grow with time, and they'll need help eventually.' Jeff was going to be that help. He wouldn't be a burden anymore. From now on, he was going to commit himself entirely to this mission just like his comrades were doing, and he promised himself that he'd be more helpful in battle. Paula and Ness needed to rest their physique, but Jeff didn't need to sleep; an all-nighter was nothing to him. Keeping true to his promise, he seized the opportunity to continue assembling his new weapon.

Working through the night, Jeff fixed the Broken Bazooka. After being fixed, the Broken Bazooka became the Heavy Bazooka.

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Moment 2: _I'm Ready_, Ness's perspective

Ness looked at the world around him. It was fading away. He, too, felt like he was fading, and he knew that he was entering a state between consciousness and unconsciousness. Normally when he saw this happening, it meant he was falling unconscious. This time, however, it meant the exact opposite; he was returning to a fully conscious state.

His perception of the Sea of Eden blurred and was mixed with other things from Magicant: snowmen, giant carrots, enemies, and his family. But they blurred too just as soon as he recognized them.

Ness was just barely cognizant enough to register the irony of his situation. Whenever the world around him faded, it was usually because he had lost a fight. This time, it was because he had won one. He had defeated his nightmare.

He didn't know what would happen next. He didn't even know how he had gotten to this magical realm to begin with. He supposed he must have fainted at the last of the eight sanctuaries or something. When the mix of images and emotions around him vanished, would he wake up back there with his three friends next to him? Would they immediately rush off together for the final battle with Giygas? Would they be ready? Ness took a moment to ponder this before taking a firm position on the matter. 'Everything we've done for the past year was for this. I know we are ready.' He remembered the three things Buzz Buzz had said would be vital to his success, and he realized with satisfaction that he had gained all three.

The first was courage. This was Ness's defining attribute. He recalled what Paula's mother had said after he brought Paula back to her from Happy Happy village: "I don't understand it, but I know that with Paula's amazing powers and your courage, you two can do anything!" Ness hadn't been too sure about that statement back then, but now after everything he had accomplished, he was convinced. Ness was the bravest of the chosen four, but throughout his adventure there had always been doubts, worries, and fears in the back of his mind. He figured that that was one of the reasons he was sent to Magicant; it was in the Sea of Eden he managed to defeat his nightmares and thus conquer his fears. It hadn't been easy; in fact, he'd actually lost to his nightmare once and had to do a rematch once he was healed. And he'd been forced to fight a Kraken all by himself, when it had taken nothing short of the combined might of the chosen four to do the same earlier on the voyage to Scaraba. Nonetheless, he eventually prevailed over every enemy that attacked him in this strange land.

As he looked back on it now, it surprised him that his greatest fear was not Giygas, but a fear he had been carrying with him since his visit to Happy Happy Village. From the moment he ended that religious cult up, Ness had been worried that he might somehow wind up in Carpainter's situation: that somehow, on the course of his adventure, he would, like Carpainter, who'd just wanted an ordinary life, think he was doing good deeds and helping the world when he was actually doing great evil through the Mani Mani statue without realizing it. The words of one of the brainwashed Happy-Happyists came back to him: "I think people who are opposed to painting the world blue are opposed to peace! I want them all to listen, even if it means kicking their butts!" Ness was terrified at the idea that despite his greatest intentions, something might be influencing his mind into doing Giygas's work for him. For this reason, he was not in the least shocked to see none other than the Mani Mani statue at the end of the Sea of Eden. He was even less shocked that ended up having to fight it, for he knew from the beginning of his adventure that he would have to overcome all his fears eventually. 'The nightmare rock,' Ness thought. 'The statue was the nightmare rock. Buzz Buzz's exact words were "shatter the nightmare rock," weren't they? I have done that, just like he said.'

The second item Buzz Buzz stressed was wisdom. Ness had always thought this was more Paula's cup of tea since she seemed to be the motherly one of chosen four and since she could make miracles happen just by praying. He'd always regarded the fact that her psychic powers were greater than his as evidence of a strong, knowledgeable mind, and her actions and words had never shown otherwise. How else could she be able to communicate with others across great distances whenever she wanted? Nevertheless, he knew his trip to Magicant had given him a serious boost in this category that might have even upstaged Paula. It was one thing to be able to speak into the mind of anyone like she could, but the trip to Magicant had given him an insight of the entire realm of consciousness, to which every being was connected. He did not merely converse with the minds of others; he actually _saw_ into the minds of his friends and enemies. The zombies, Master Belch, and even his greatest enemy, Pokey…Ness delved into the thoughts of his foes and found something that changed his entire perception of evil: human feelings. Master Belch was lamenting the loss of his pride, which had been destroyed upon his defeat by chosen four, and Pokey...when Ness saw him on that couch in Magicant, he did not see someone who hated him. He only saw the neighbor who bugged him at the beginning of his adventure, the boy who was annoying, overweight, spoiled, and selfish, but not evil. A person who would do just about anything to get his way, including making others unhappy, but not a person who actually wanted to see others unhappy. They spoke only for a minute, but what was said surprised Ness more than anything else in all of Magicant: Pokey was jealous of Ness. Jealous of his loving family, his natural abilities, and his luck. It was then Ness figured out that that was the whole reason Pokey had joined forces with Ness's enemy; Pokey had never been good at anything that Ness couldn't easily beat him at. He was jealous, and he was desperate to finally see himself succeed while Ness and his friends, on the other side of the war, failed. After that visit, Ness found he could no longer hate Pokey or any of his other enemies, even Giygas.

Finally, there was friendship. When Ness consumed the "magic cake" in Summers, he had a dream about what the final member of the chosen four, whom he had not known at the time, was doing. If there was anything he learned from that dream other than Poo's ability to resist extreme pain, it was that friendship was one of Poo's strong points. Even though he was the prince of Dalaam, he regarded the citizens as equal, and these people held him in very high regard. Whenever he wasn't busy, he spent time socializing with the population, including both youth (who were all girls for some reason) and older people. He did his best to maintain social harmony at all costs.

Ness had never had trouble making friends, so he didn't understand what Buzz Buzz meant when he said friendship would be very important on the quest. But now he did. He had made so many friends on his quest. These friends saw what he could do and believed in him, and although some might argue that this was inconsequential to the fight against Giygas, it certainly boosted morale. Plus, Ness had a hunch that his team would need the support of those they had helped along the journey if they were to ever beat Giygas.

In addition, he had made three very close friends: Paula, Jeff, and Poo. They were the best friends he had ever had. They all trusted each other with their lives, and they always depended on each other in battle. If not for the close bond they shared, Ness would have doubted their ability to fight together. But he did not doubt his friends, had never doubted them. And now that he had been through Magicant, he no longer doubted himself. He was ready for the final battle. _They_ were ready.

Ness smiled at his conviction, and suddenly the pink blur surrounding him vanished and was replaced with complete darkness. He looked around, trying to ascertain the cause of this change, and he realized that his eyes were closed. 'Have they been closed the whole time I was in Magicant?' With great effort, he opened his eyes, and he found himself on the ground back at the eighth sanctuary staring straight into the concerned faces of his teammates.

They asked if he was okay. He washed away their worries and stood up. He was better than okay. His confidence in himself and his friends had grown, and suddenly he realized his psychic powers had expanded radically. The power of each sanctuary, of the earth itself, flowed into him, and his friends looked in awe as they sensed his stats increase and dwarf their own. When he was finished, Poo asked what they should do next.

Ness now knew his hunch that he would need help from the friends his group had made was correct, for a voice inside his head was telling him to go to Saturn Valley. As he told Paula, Jeff, and Poo this, he saw his own confidence mirrored in their faces. They believed in him. They believed in each other.

They were ready.


End file.
